An electronic marketplace offers a large number of items for sale. It is not uncommon for some electronic marketplaces to offer upwards of hundreds of thousands or millions of items for sale. Each item to be offered for sale is submitted to the electronic marketplace, the submission including information about the item such as an item name, item description, and item image. If the item is associated with a recognizable manufacturer, distributor, or otherwise a source—the item being a brand name item—such source or brand name information may be submitted to the electronic marketplace.
A plurality of persons may enter item information corresponding to the plurality of items to be offered by the electronic marketplace. For example, the plurality of persons can be a plurality of sellers, each seller submitting one or more items to the electronic marketplace. A multitude of contributors, however, increases the possibility of non-uniformity in item information among the submitted items. Even identical items may be submitted with differing item information, such as non-identical brand names. Non-uniformity in item information or descriptions among items in a catalog increases inefficiencies and inaccuracies in downstream processes involving use of the stored item information. For example, incorrect or incomplete identification of items may occur in response to product search requests due to the non-uniformity in item information in the product catalog.
The headings provided herein are for convenience only and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the terms used.